ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Zagone]

Hello! Didn't know where else to ask this, so I guess this might be appropriate. I ordered 2 queens that arrived today, one queen had workers, the other did not.

However, when I looked them over to see if all was okay, it wasn't. The testtube with the small colony had a dead queen inside, to my grim dismay.

However, as some kind of bonus the package contained an extra queen, so my question is as follows:

Might it be worth trying to get the remaining workers to accept one of the other queens, or is it so unlikely that they'll accept her that I might aswell let the two lonely queens evolve on their own?

Thanks in advance!

[Phasmid]

You could try adding one worker to the queen and see if she accepts it, if she dose then add another, if she dosen't then she will kill it. This worked fine when I got a small Pheidole pallidula colony to accept all the workers from a larger colony.
But if it dosen't work and the queen kills it then it could also stress the queen, reducing her chances of raising her first workers.

[Zagone]

Well, I have to stress them regardless because the water has also run out in their test-tubes. :/

I haven't enjoyed this service at all, should've ordered form Antstore instead.

Guess I'll try adding a worker to one of the queens. If it doens't work they're all dying anyway. :/

[JimmyVe]

Yes try to add one, only one, if you add more they could kill the queen. Its the only thing you can do at the moment.

[Zagone]

Seems the first one was accepted, I havn't seen it since I put it in, but someone has put some sand at the opening and I doubt it was the queen.

(And no, I havn't put them in a full basin, jsut gave them a miniature one to ease eating, worker insertion and eventually getting the queen into a testtube with fresh water.)